About Me So the whole new and improved Supdate thing didn't exactly work out (it's been nearly 2 years since I updated it!). I can't say that I'm too surprised. But instead of making that portion of the site a complete waste, I thought I'd put forth a little bit about me.
Instead of going all chronological and starting young, I thought I'd do the reverse. In fact, today, one of the most important things in my life, is the fact that I'm looking for a job. If you've received my resume and/or cover letter and did a little Google search to find out what more you could figure out about me, let me say unequivocally: I'm the guy you're looking for. Oh, and I happen to like hockey and poker (and post about them on the web more often than I do about myself).
I'm married, with a daughter I adopted in June of 2007. As of the time I'm posting this, her first day of high-school was two days ago (and it's going pretty well, so that obviously means she's not dating yet). I've been married for almost four years now to a wonderful woman I met online.
I've lived in Colorado since August 2000 (so seven years and a week). I moved out a couple of weeks after finishing up my MSME defense, and slept on my buddy's couch while looking for a job. Fortunately I was able to get hired on with Maxtor (the old hard drive company) and worked there for six-and-a-half years before leaving the company after it was announced they were being purchased by Seagate. I worked for a small-time portable hard drive company, Cornice, for eleven months, before they finally shut their doors. Hard drives were good to me, and maybe they'll be good to me again in the future, but as I've always said, I won't retire a hard drive engineer.
The mid-90's saw me working on my Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Michgian Technological University in the Upper Peninsula. I focused on dynamic systems, and my MS project involved computational modeling of a very simplified elastic system. The setup was a precursor to a more complex problem which was applicable to a model of an overhead cam-valve system for the automotive industry (the model of the more complicated system was a project I had originally undertaken in 1993 as undergraduate research — and was originally coded in Fortran 77!). I took a lot of structural engineering, vibration, and acoustics courses, and left Michigan Tech with a particularly solid background in Experimental Modal Analysis. I was fortunate enough to spend six months doing Modal Testing on Wind Turbines at the National Wind Technology Center between Boulder and Golden (in Colorado) and in the field in Palm Springs and Tehachapi Pass California. I left Tech, sans Masters, to work for Western Digital (designing and testing hard disk drives) in 1998, and when they closed down that facility in January of 2000, it was a natural fit for me to go back and finish up my Master's degree.
The first half of the 90's saw me get my undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Tech. I spent a lot of time working on campus, running a couple of different learning centers (the Physics Learning Center as an undergrad, and the Engineering Learning Center as a grad student), managing one of the dorm hall cafeterias (shout out to Wadsworth Hall!), doing things like Fortran coding for undergraduate research, and lots of goofing off. I DJ'ed at the campus radio station, I played volleyball, basketball, football, broomball, wallyball, skiing, and mud volleyball. I taught some laboratories (Modal Analysis and Advanced Digital Controls were both Grad-level labs, and I got to take a spin teaching an Junior-level Ordinary Vibrations lab). I thoroughly enjoyed college and proved to myself that despite every temptation under the sun, I don't have an alcohol problem. (And I mean I tried like crazy to develop one...)
Before college, I grew up in a little town in the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. It was a little tourist town where it was typical for the kids to think they knew more about the outside world than they really did. Summers were spent mingling with kids from bigger towns whose parents would head up that way to spend vacation). I worked a lot then, as well, managing a Dairy Queen, working at nuclear power plant, assisting operating a ferry, doing road construction, hooking up phone service — mostly outdoor stuff. Winters were the opposite, with about 3500 families living in the town year-around. Teachers at the schools were above average, and they set me up well for succeeding at college and beyond. My father and step-mother still live in the same house in the same small town, across the street from the same ski hill and down the block from the same beach on the shores of Lake Michigan. Unfortunately I don't get back home to visit nearly as much as I'd like.
Mom lives in a dinky town down state, but she seems on the verge of moving at any moment. My oldest brother is still currently in Michigan, living in downtown Grand Rapids, but they seem to be on the verge of heading out as well. My middle brother (who is only twelve years older than me) is out in Oregon. My youngest older brother is in the Sacramento area. My little sister lives in Chicago, and just got married earlier this summer. We're all over the map, pretty much, but some of us talk about consolidating somewhere (generally out here in my area outside Boulder).
I tend to obsess over hobbies. Hobbies tend to waft in and out of my life. Sometimes I have a couple going at once. I always watch sports, but Hockey and Football get more than their fair share of attention. I like getting out the telescope and looking into the night skies. I really enjoy reading about science (mostly the hard sciences) and the history of science. I fancy myself a photographer, but I don't spend nearly enough time snapping photos to actually deserve that title. I'm not particularly good at keeping in touch with old friends, but I feel like there are fifty people I could pick up the phone and call and be invited to sleep on their couch and spend a week living with them and their family. I'm extremely allergic to just about every non-reptilian non-aquatic animal that people typically keep as pets, and I've been hospitalized for spending an evening around a cat. I never outgrew my childhood asthma, and my (landlord's) lawn looks like shit because taking care of it is too debilitating for me. My mother-in-law lives four miles away, and she's probably the most giving person I know. I could be totally contented if I got snowed into my house for two weeks, as long as the power didn't go out (allowing me to navigate the internet and lay around in bed and read non-fiction). I'm a pretty simple guy that tries hard to not judge other folks on the things which make them happy. You like country music or lowering your ride or following celebutants in the "news" or getting hot and heavy into political debates? Good for you. Chances are great that I enjoy stuff that you'd think is pretty vapid and/or pointless.
I'm not good at being concise. I'm pretty self-aware. My name's Neal.
Page updated 8:17 PM 8/22/2007 (MST)